"Nepotism, tribalism, partisanship, nationalism are all government failures"

KABUL - Afghan President Hamid Karzai called on Thursday for the country's parliament to fight the graft and nepotism that is eroding international confidence in his government ahead of a July meeting with donors in Tokyo aimed at securing extra aid.
Karzai, addressing a specially convened parliamentary session aimed at confronting political opponents and the myriad challenges facing the country before the end-2014 departure of NATO combat troops, stressed the need for greater unity.
"Nepotism, tribalism, partisanship, nationalism are all government failures which need your cooperation in order to get fixed," said Karzai, waving away interjections by some lawmakers.

"Each government worker who reaches an important rank is respected not because of his position, but by how many armed men and cars he has with him," he said.
Donors will gather in Tokyo to decide on future foreign support for reconstruction and development in desperately poor Afghanistan, which is still heavily reliant on aid, and suffers from widespread graft more than ten years into the NATO-led war.

The head of Afghanistan's central bank said this week his country would need $6-7 billion a year in aid over the next decade to help the economy grow.
Karzai said donor nations were likely to pledge a total of $4 billion in civilian assistance, but in the future Afghans would have only themselves to blame for damaging the country.

"Corruption has reached a peak in this country - the seizure of public and government properties, impunity from the law. These are all the pains of Afghanistan," he said.
"These are all the pains that the government must cure. If cured, Afghanistan will be independent and developed. If not cured, our lives will remain in torment."

Karzai's government has yet to prosecute a single high-level corruption case, despite being ranked one of the world's most graft-affected countries by the Berlin-based anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International.
The president is under pressure from Western backers to do more to fight graft, and reassure donors that their money will not be squandered through contract fraud and theft.
Highlighting the worries among Karzai's backers, Britain's aid watchdog this year called on the government in London to tighten its oversight of the aid program in Afghanistan.

Karzai was speaking to a special session of parliament a day after a Taliban suicide attack on a joint Afghan-US patrol that killed 21 people in the east.
"I have noticed that these days, in the past one, two or three months, attacks on our soldiers, police and intelligence officers have increased," Karzai said. "Every day we have at least 20 to 25 casualties, every day at least 20 to 25 of our youths are making the sacrifice for this country and are being killed."

Karzai admitted his government and its Western allies had failed to bring peace to Afghanistan, which has suffered almost continuous conflict for the past three decades.
Karzai said Afghanistan would require help in keeping its growing police and army equipped and ready to battle the Taliban and its allies, with donors also expected to provide $4.1 billion a year post-2014 to finance local security forces. (Reuters)